The Night Watch (14 page)

'This is the most probable path. The vortex attains its maximum power and the Inferno erupts. Millions killed. A global cataclysm – nuclear, biological, asteroid impact, a twenty-point earthquake. You name it.'

'And a direct infernal discharge?' I asked cautiously, glancing sideways at the Dark Magician. His face remained impassive.

'No. I don't think so. The threshold's still a long way off.' The boss shook his head. 'Otherwise, I think the Day Watch and the Night Watch would have wiped each other out already. The second path . . .'

A thin line, leading away from the black stripe. Broken off abruptly.

'Ehmination of the target. If the target dies, the vortex will disperse . . . of its own accord.'

Zabulon stirred and said politely:

'I'm prepared to help with this little initiative. The Night Watch cannot carry it out on its own, I believe? We are at your service.'

Silence. Then the boss laughed.

'As you wish,' said Zabulon with a shrug. 'I repeat, for the time being we offer you our assistance. We don't want a global catastrophe that will wipe out millions of people in an instant. Not yet.'

'The third path,' said the boss, looking at me. 'Watch carefully.'

Another line, branching off from the main root, gradually growing thinner and fading away to nothing.

'That's what happens if you get involved, Anton.'

'What do I have to do?' I asked.

'I don't know. Probability forecasting has never been an exact science. I only know one thing: you can remove the vortex.'

I suddenly had the stupid idea that maybe I was still being tested. A field work test ... I'd killed the vampire, and now . . . But it couldn't be. Not with such high stakes.

'I've never removed any black vortices.' My voice sounded different, not exactly frightened, more surprised. The Dark Magician Zabulon giggled repellently, in a woman's voice.

The boss nodded.

'I know that, Anton.'

He stood up, pulled his gown around him and walked up to me. He looked absurd, or at least his oriental garb seemed like an awkward parody in the setting of an ordinary Moscow apartment.

'Nobody has ever removed any vortices like this one. You'll be the first to try.'

I said nothing.

'And don't forget, Anton, if you mess this up, even just a tiny bit, anything at all, you'll be the first to burn. You won't even have enough time to withdraw into the Twilight. You know what happens to Light Ones when they're caught in an Inferno eruption?'

My throat went dry. I nodded.

'Pardon me, my dear enemy,' Zabulon said mockingly, 'but don't you allow your colleagues the right to choose? In such situations, even in wartime, it has always been usual to call for volunteers.'

'We've already made our call for volunteers,' the boss snapped without turning round. 'We've all been volunteers for a long time already. And we don't have any choice.'

'But we do. Always.' The Dark Magician laughed again.

'When we acknowledge that humans have the right to choose, we deprive ourselves of it, Zabulon,' said Boris Ignatievich, with a glance at the Dark Magician. 'You're playing to the wrong audience here. Don't interfere.'

'I say no more.' Zabulon lowered his head and shrank down again.

'Give it your best shot,' said the boss. 'Anton, I can't give you any advice. Try. I beg you, please, try. And . . . forget everything you've been taught. Don't believe anything I've said, don't believe what you wrote in your course notes, don't believe your own eyes, don't believe what anyone else says.'

'Then what do I believe, Boris Ignatievich?'

'If I knew that, Anton, I'd walk straight out of this headquarters and over to that building myself.'

We both looked out the window simultaneously. The black vortex was still swirling, swaying from side to side. Someone walking along the pavement suddenly turned to face into the snow and started making a wide circle round the stalk of the vortex. I noticed a path had already been trodden along the edge of the road: the people couldn't see the Evil straining to strike their world, but they could sense its approach.

'I'll watch Anton,' Olga said. 'Back him up and maintain communications.'

'From outside,' the boss agreed. 'Only from outside. Anton, go. We'll do the best we can to screen you from any kind of observation.'

The owl flew up off the bed and landed on my shoulder.

I glanced at my friends, then at the Dark Magician – he looked like he'd gone into hibernation – and walked out of the room. The noise in the rest of the apartment faded immediately.

They showed me out in total silence, without any unnecessary words, without any shoulder-slapping or helpful advice. After all, what I was doing wasn't such a big deal. I was only on my way to die.

It was quiet.

Too quiet somehow, even for a Moscow commuter suburb at that late hour. As if everyone had shut themselves in at home, turned out the lights and huddled down with their heads under the blankets, keeping quiet, saying nothing. Quiet, but not sleeping. The only movement was the trembling of the blue and red spots in the windows – the TVs were switched on everywhere. It's become a habit already, when you're afraid, when you're suffering – switch on the TV and watch absolutely everything, from the teleshopping to the news. People can't see the Twilight world. But they are capable of sensing how close it is.

'Olga, what can you tell me about this vortex?'

'Nothing definite.'

So that was it?

I stood at the entrance, watching the stalk of the vortex flexing like an elephant's trunk. I didn't feel like going in just yet.

'When . . . what size of vortex can you extinguish?'

'Five metres high, and I have a shot at it. Three metres and it's a sure thing.'

'And would the girl survive if you did that?'

'She might.'

There was something bothering me. In this unnatural silence, with even the cars in the street trying to avoid this doomed district of the city, there were still some sounds left . . .

Then it hit me. The dogs were howling. In all the apartments in all the buildings on all sides, the miserable dogs were complaining to their owners – in quiet, pitiful, helpless voices. They could see the Inferno moving closer.

'Olga, information about the girl. All of it.'

'Svetlana Nazarova. Twenty-five years old. Physician, employed in polyclinic number seventeen. Has never previously come to the attention of the Night Watch. Has never previously come to the attention of the Day Watch. No magical powers detected. Her parents and younger brother live in Brateevo, she maintains occasional contact with them, mostly by phone. Four close girlfriends, currently being checked, so far nothing exceptional. Relations with other people equable, no serious hostility observed.'

'A doctor,' I said thoughtfully. 'That's a lead, Olga. Some old man or old woman dissatisfied with their treatment. There's often an upsurge of latent magical powers in old age.'

'That's being checked out,' Olga replied. 'So far nothing's turned up.'

There was no point, it was stupid making wild guesses, people cleverer than I am had already been working on the girl for half a day.

'What else?'

'Blood group O. No serious illnesses, occasional mild cardiac arrhythmia. First sexual contact at the age of seventeen, with one of her peers, out of curiosity. She was married four months, has been divorced for two years, relations with her ex-husband have remained equable. No children.'

'The husband's powers?'

'He hasn't any. Neither does his new wife. That's the first thing that was checked.'

'Enemies?'

'Two female ill-wishers at work. Two rejected admirers at work. A school friend who tried to get a fake sick-note six months ago.'

'And?'

'She refused.'

'Well, well. And how much magic have they got?'

'Next to none. Their malevolence quotient is ordinary. They all have only weak magical powers. They couldn't create a vortex like this one.'

'Any patients died? Recently?'

'None.'

'Then where did the curse come from?' Yes, now I could see why the Watch had got nowhere with this. Svetlana had turned out to be a thoroughgoing goody-two-shoes. Five enemies in twenty-five years – that was something to be proud of.

Olga didn't answer my rhetorical question.

'I've got to go,' I said. I turned towards the windows where I could see the two guards' silhouettes. One of them waved to me. 'Olga, how did Ignat try to work this?'

'The standard approach. A meeting in the street, the "diffident intellectual" line. Coffee in a bar. Conversation. A rapid rise in the mark's attraction level. He bought champagne and liqueurs, they came here.'

'And after that?'

'The vortex started to grow.'

'And the reason?'

'There was none. She liked Ignat, in fact she was starting to feel strongly attracted. But at precisely that moment the vortex started to grow catastrophically fast. Ignat ran through three styles of behaviour and managed to get an unambiguous invitation to stay the night. That was when the vortex shifted gear into explosive growth. He was recalled. The vortex stabilised.'

'How was he recalled?'

I was frozen through already, and my boots felt horribly damp on my feet. And I still wasn't ready.

'The "sick mother" line. A call to his mobile phone, he apologised, promised to call her tomorrow. There were no hitches, the mark didn't get suspicious.'

'And the vortex stabilised?'

Olga didn't answer, she was obviously communicating with the analysts. Then:

'It even shrank a little bit. Three centimetres. But that might just be natural recoil when the energy input's cut off.'

There was something in all this, but I couldn't formulate my vague suspicions clearly.

'Where's her practice, Olga?'

'Right here, we're in it. It includes this house. Patients often come to her apartment.'

'Excellent. Then I'll go as a patient.'

'Do you need any help implanting false memories?'

'I'll manage.'

'The boss says okay,' Olga replied after a pause. 'Go ahead. Your persona is: Anton Gorodetsky, programmer, unmarried, under observation for three years, diagnosis – stomach ulcer, resident in this building, apartment number sixty-four. It's empty right now, if necessary we can provide backup on that.'

'Three years is too much for me,' I confessed. 'A year. One year, max.'

'Okay.'

I looked at Olga and she looked at me with those unblinking bird's eyes, and somewhere in there I could still see part of that dirty, aristocratic woman who'd drunk cognac with me in my kitchen.

'Good luck,' she said. 'Try to reduce the size of the vortex. Ten metres at least . . . then I'll risk it.'

The bird flew up into the air and instantly withdrew into the Twilight, down into the very deepest layers.

I sighed and set off towards the building's entrance. The trunk of the vortex swayed as it tried to touch me. I stretched my hands out, folding them into the Xamadi, the sign of negation.

The vortex shuddered and recoiled. Not really afraid, just playing by the rules. At that size the advancing Inferno should already have developed powers of reason, stopped being a mindless, target-seeking missile and become a ferocious, experienced kamikaze. I know that sounds odd – an experienced kamikaze – but when it comes to the Dark, the term's justified. Once it breaks through into the human world, an Inferno vortex is doomed, but it's only a single wasp out of a huge swarm that dies.

'Your hour hasn't come yet,' I said. The Inferno wasn't about to answer me, but I felt like saying it anyway.

I walked past the stalk. The vortex looked like it was made of blue-black glass that had acquired the flexibility of rubber. Its outer surface was almost motionless, but deep inside, where the dark blue became impenetrable darkness, I could vaguely see a furious spinning motion.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe its hour had come . . .

The entrance didn't even have a coded entry system. Or rather, it had one, but it had been smashed and gutted. That was normal. A little greeting from the Dark. I'd already stopped paying any attention to its tracks, even stopped noticing the words and the dirty paw marks on walls, the broken lamps and the fouled lifts. But now I was wound up tight.

I needn't have asked for the number. I could sense the girl – I kept on thinking about her as a girl, even though she'd been married – I knew which way to go, I could even see her apartment, or rather, not see it, but perceive it as a whole.

The only thing I didn't understand was how I was going to get rid of that damned twister.

I stopped in front of the door. It was an ordinary one, not metal, very unusual on a first floor, especially in a building where the entrance lock is broken. I gave a deep sigh and rang the bell. Eleven o'clock. A bit late, of course.

I heard steps. There was no sound insulation . . .

S
HE OPENED
the door straight away.

She didn't ask who it was, she didn't look through the spy-hole, she didn't put on the chain. In Moscow! And at night! Alone in her apartment! The vortex was devouring the final remnants of the girl's caution, the caution that had kept her alive for several days. That was usually the way people died when they had been cursed . . .

But to look at, Svetlana still seemed normal. Except maybe for the shadows under her eyes, but who knew what kind of a night she'd had? And the way she was dressed – a skirt, a smart blouse, shoes – as if she was expecting someone or was all set to go out.

'Good evening, Svetlana,' I said, already noticing a faint gleam of recognition in her eyes. Of course, she had a vague memory of me from the previous day. And I had to exploit that moment when she'd already realised we knew each other but still hadn't remembered from where.

I reached out through the Twilight. Cautiously, because the vortex was hanging right there above the girl's head as if it was attached to her, and it could react at any second. Cautiously, because I didn't really want to deceive her.

Not even if it were for her own good.

It's only the first time that's interesting and funny. If you still find it amusing after that, the Night Watch is the wrong place for you. It's one thing to shift someone's moral imperatives, especially when it's always towards the Good. It's quite another to interfere with their memory. It's inevitable, it has to be done, it's part of the Treaty, and through the very process of entering and leaving the Twilight we induce a momentary amnesia in the people around us.

But if you ever start to enjoy toying with someone else's memory – it's time you quit the Watch.

'Good evening, Anton.' Her voice blurred slightly when I forced her to remember things that had never happened. 'What's happened?'

I smiled sourly and slapped myself on the stomach. By now there was a hurricane raging in Svetlana's memory. My control wasn't so great that I could implant a fully structured false memory in her mind. Fortunately, in this case, I could just give her a couple of hints, and from then on she deceived herself. She put my image together out of one old acquaintance I happened to resemble and another person she'd known and liked even earlier than that, but not for long, as well as a couple of dozen patients my age and some of her neighbours in the building. I only gave the process a gentle nudge, helping Svetlana towards an integrated image. A good man ... a neurasthenic . . . quite often unwell. . . flirts a bit, but no more than a bit – very unsure of himself. . . lives on the next stairwell.

'Are you in pain?' She gathered her thoughts. She really was a good doctor. With a genuine vocation.

'A bit. I had a drink yesterday,' I said, trying to look repentant.

'Anton, I warned you . . . come in . . .'

I went in and closed the door – the girl hadn't even bothered to do it. While I was taking off my coat, I had a quick look round, in the ordinary world and in the Twilight.

Cheap wallpaper, a tattered rug on the floor, an old pair of boots, a light bulb in a simple glass shade on the ceiling, a radio telephone on the wall – cheap Chinese junk. Modest. Clean. Ordinary. And the important thing here wasn't that the profession of district doctor doesn't pay very well. It was more that she didn't feel any need for comfort. That was bad . . . very bad.

In the Twilight world the apartment made a slightly better impression. No repulsive plant life, no trace of the Dark. Apart from the black vortex, of course, just hanging there ... I could see the entire thing, from the stalk, swirling round above the girl's head, up to the broad mouth, thirty metres higher.

I followed Svetlana through into the only room. At least things were a bit more cosy in here. The sofa had a warm orange glow – not all of it, though, just the part by the old-fashioned standard lamp. Two walls were covered with single-box bookshelves stacked on top of each other, seven shelves high.

I was beginning to understand her, not just as a professional target and a potential victim of a Dark Magician, not just as the unwitting cause of a catastrophe, but as a person. An introverted, bookish child, with a mass of complexes and her head full of crazy ideals and a childish faith in the beautiful prince who was searching for her and would surely find her. Work as a doctor, a few girlfriends, a few male friends and lots and lots of loneliness. Conscientious work almost in the spirit of a builder of communism, infrequent visits to the cafe and occasional loves. And each evening like every other one, on the sofa, with a book, with the phone lying beside her, with the television muttering something soapy and comforting.

How many of you there still are, girls and boys of various ages, raised by naïve parents in the seventies. How many of you there are, so unhappy, not knowing how to be happy. How I long to take pity on you, how I long to help you. To touch you through the Twilight – gently, with no force at all. To give you just a little confidence in yourself, just a bit of optimism, a gram of willpower, a crumb of irony. To help you, so that you can help others.

But I can't.

Every action taken by Good grants permission for an active response by Evil. The Treaty! The Watches! The balance of peace in the world?

I have to live with it or go crazy, break the law, walk through the crowd handing out unsolicited gifts, changing destinies, wondering which corner I'll turn and find my old friends and eternal enemies, waiting to dispatch me into the Twilight. For ever . . .

'Anton, how's your mother?'

Ah, yes. As Anton Gorodetsky, the patient, I had an old mother. She had osteochondrosis and a full set of old folks' ailments. She was Svetlana's patient too.

'Not too bad, she's okay. I'm the one who's—'

'Lie down.'

I pulled off my shirt and sweater and lay down on the sofa. Svetlana squatted down beside me. She ran her warm fingers over my stomach and even palpated my liver.

'Does that hurt?'

'No . . . not now.'

'How much did you drink?'

As I replied to the doctor's questions, I looked for the answers in her mind. No need to make it look like I was dying. Yes... I had dull pains, not too sharp . . . After food ... I'd just had a little twinge. . .

'So far it's just gastritis, Anton,' said Svetlana, taking her hands away. 'But that's bad enough, you know that. I'll write you a prescription.'

She got up, walked to the door and took her handbag off the peg.

All this time I was observing the vortex. There was nothing happening, my arrival hadn't triggered any intensification in the Inferno, but it hadn't done anything to weaken it either.

'Anton
. . .' I recognised the voice coming through the Twilight as Olga's.
'Anton, the vortex has lost three centimetres of height. You must have made a right move somewhere. Think, Anton.'

A right move? When? I hadn't done anything except invent a reason to visit.

'Anton, do you have any of your ulcer medicine left?' Svetlana asked, looking across at me from the table. I nodded as I tucked in my shirt.

'Yes, a few capsules.'

'When you get home, take one. And buy some more tomorrow. Then take them for two weeks, before you go to bed.'

Svetlana was obviously one of those doctors who believe in pills. That didn't bother me, I believed in them too. All of us – the Others, that is – have an irrational awe of science; even in cases when elementary magical influence would do the job, we reach for the painkillers and antibiotics.

'Svetlana, I hope you don't mind me asking,' I said, looking away guiltily. 'Have you got problems of some kind?'

'Where did you get that idea, Anton?' she asked, carrying on writing and not even glancing in my direction. But she tensed.

'Just a feeling. Has someone offended you somehow?'

She put down her pen and looked at me with curiosity and gentle sympathy in her eyes.

'No, Anton. There's nothing. I expect it's just the winter. The winter's too long.'

She gave a forced smile and the Inferno vortex swayed above her head, shifting its stalk greedily.

'The sky's grey, the world's grey. And I don't feel like doing anything . . . everything seems meaningless. I'm tired, Anton. It'll pass when spring comes.'

'You're depressed, Svetlana,' I blurted out before I realised that I'd drawn the diagnosis out of her own memory. But she didn't pay any attention.

'Probably. Never mind, when the sun comes out. . . Thanks for your concern, Anton.'

This time her smile was more genuine, but it was still pained.

I heard Olga's voice whispering through the Twilight:

'Anton, it's down ten centimetres. The vortex is losing height. The analysts are working on it, Anton. Keep talking to her.'

What was I doing right?'

That question was more terrifying than 'What am I doing wrong?' Make a mistake, and all you have to do is make a sharp change of approach. But if you've hit the target without knowing how you did it, then you're in a real bind. It's tough being a bad shot who's hit the bull's eye by chance, struggling to remember how you moved your hands and screwed up your eyes, how much pressure your finger applied to the trigger . . . and not wanting to believe that the bullet was directed to the target by a random gust of wind.

I caught myself sitting and looking at Svetlana. And she was looking at me. Seriously, without speaking.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I'm sorry, Svetlana, forgive me. I came barging in late in the evening, and now I'm interfering in your private life . . .'

'That's all right, Anton. Actually, I like it. Now, would you like some tea?"

'Down twenty centimetres, Anton! Say yes!'

Even those few centimetres skimmed off the height of the vortex were a gift from the gods. They were human lives. Tens or even hundreds of lives snatched away from the inevitable catastrophe. I didn't know how I was doing it, but I was increasing Svetlana's resistance to the Inferno. And the vortex was beginning to melt away.

'Thanks, Svetlana. I'd love some.'

She got up and went into the kitchen. I followed her. What was going on here?

'Anton, we have a provisional analysis . . .'

I thought I glimpsed the white silhouette of a bird through the curtained window – it flitted along the wall, following Svetlana.

'Ignat followed the usual plan. Compliments, interest, infatuation, love. She liked it, but it made the vortex grow. You're using a different approach – sympathy. Passive sympathy.'

No recommendations followed, which meant the analysts hadn't reached any conclusions yet. But at least now I knew what I had to do next. Look at her sadly, smile sympathetically, drink tea and say: 'Your eyes look tired, Sveta . . .'

We'd be talking to each other like friends, right? Of course we would. I was sure of that.

'Anton?'

I'd been staring at her too long. Svetlana was standing by the cooker, not moving, holding a kettle with its shiny surface dulled by condensation. She wasn't exactly frightened, that feeling was already beyond her, completely drained out of her by the black vortex. It was more like she was embarrassed.

'Is something wrong?' she asked.

'Yes. It feels awkward, Svetlana. I just turned up in the middle of the night, dumped my problems on you and now I'm hanging around, waiting for tea . . .'

'Anton, please stay. You know, I've had such a strange day, and being here alone . . . Let's call it my fee for the consultation, shall we? That is, you staying for a while and talking to me,' she explained hastily.

I nodded. Any word might be a mistake.

'The vortex has shrunk another fifteen centimetres. You've chosen the right tactic, Anton.'

But I hadn't chosen anything, why couldn't those lousy analysts understand that? I'd used the powers of an Other to enter someone else's home, I'd interfered with someone else's memory so I could stay there longer . . . and now I was just going with the flow.

And hoping the current would bring me out where I needed to be.

'Would you like some jam, Anton?'

'Yes . . .'

A mad tea party! Move over, Lewis Carroll. The maddest tea parties aren't the ones in the rabbit's burrow, with the Mad Hatter, the Dormouse and the March Hare round the table. A small kitchen in a small apartment, tea left over from the morning, topped up with boiling water, raspberry jam from a three-litre jar – this is the stage on which unknown actors play out genuinely mad tea parties. This is the place, the only place where they say the words that they would never say otherwise. This is where they pull nasty little secrets out of the darkness with a conjuror's flourish, where they take the family skeletons out of the closet, where they discover the cyanide sprinkled in the sugar bowl. And you can never find a reason to get up and leave, because every time they pour you more tea, offer you jam and move the sugar bowl a bit closer . . .

'Anton, I've known you for a year already . . .'

A shadow, a brief, perplexed shadow in Svetlana's eyes. Her memory obligingly fills in the blanks, her memory hands her explanations for why a man as likeable and good as me is still no more than her patient.

'Only from my work, of course, but now ... I feel I'd like to talk to you somehow ... as a neighbour. As a friend. Is that okay?'

'Of course, Sveta.'

A grateful smile. It's not so easy to use the familiar form of my name. From Anton to Antosha is too big a step.

'Thank you, Anton. You know ... I just don't know where I am. For the last three days now.'

Of course, it's not so easy to know where you are when you have the sword of Nemesis hanging over you. Blind, furious Nemesis, escaped from the power of the dead gods . . .

'Today . . . never mind . . .'

She wanted to tell me about Ignat. She didn't understand what was happening to her, why a chance encounter had almost got all the way to the bed. She felt like she was going insane. Everybody who comes within the Others' sphere of activity has thoughts like that.